Thursday, August 30, 2012

Morning Glories #21

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Joe Eisma

One thing that can kind of annoy about Morning Glories, Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma's brilliant series about students involved in a Lost-like story about a strange school that kidnaps its students and manipulates their lives for unseen ends, and that is that the series often waits a few issues before addressing cliffhangers.

A couple of issues back, Hunter, one of the core group of characters we as readers have been following since the series began, was at the mercy of another character, who was prepared to kill him.  He was suddenly, and violently, rescued by a girl we hadn't seen before.  Then Spencer moved the story to other places for a while.  Finally, with this issue, we get to see what happened next.

It turns out that Hunter's rescuers were part of the same group as Guillaume, Jun's old friend and lover, who we met a while back.  They'd all been studying under the mysterious Abraham before being sent to the Morning Glory Academy to carry out some kind of mission.

Most of this issue is given over to introducing these new characters - we see in flashbacks that they went through the same events as our heroes did when they first came to the school, and we learn that they all knew Jun from back in the day.  We also get a slight sense of their mission, but Spencer plays that part pretty close to the vest, choosing instead to add to the high number of unknowns currently gathering throughout this series.

Spencer's work here has always impressed me in terms of character and his ability to effectively use the individual issue to tell part of a larger story (really, this is a dying art in this day and age).  Eisma is equally adept at crafting a strong sense of atmosphere and dread in this comic.  Together, they give jsut enough information each issue to make me anticipate the next without frustration setting in.

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